the personal weblog of

Editing Like Alice.

In fact, in an interview with the Paris Review about her process, Munro said that “in about three quarters of what I do, I reach a point somewhere, fairly early on, when I think I’m going to abandon this story.” And she feels very “grouchy” about it. … [E]ven Munro struggles with the big changes we all know, deep down, we must make. The difference is, she makes them.

As I am stuck in a couple pieces at the moment, this is helpful. Knowing, too, that Alice McDermott will often write “two or three hundred” pages to get her first fifty is also soothing—I usually end up with way too much for anything I write (review, brief, anything) before I can find that good section. Maybe that’s the mark that you efforts are headed somewhere.